Back home in OlKalou, our meals were a mass production for a minimum of ten people making the taste sometimes disappear in the quantity. Our meals were mainly one pot. We had a standard stew that consisted of: Meat (not every meal), potatoes, carrots, peas, cabbage with cilantro (daniya) to season, all cooked in one pot. That stew was good as an accompaniment for anything. Rice or Chapatis. Githeri was also added into that stew making it a wholesome one pot meal.
We also had rice casserole. Dont let the fancy sounding name fool you. That was rice cooked in meat, potatoes, carrots, peas and cilantro, all in one pot. We were so sick and tired of potatoes and cabbage in every meal, I still remember my brothers pleading with me as I served their plates “ndukanjikirire mawaru na makabichi” translation: don’t serve me Ma-potatoes and Ma-Cabbage”. That “Ma” was an expression of disdain.
The only break we got from the “standard stew” was days of Ugali with Collard Greens (Sukuma wiki) and days of Mukimo. Then there were the pumpkins (marenge). OlKalou grew everything in excessive quantities. When marenge matured, we had a granary (ikumbi) full of marenge of all shapes, sizes and color. They were a godsend because they were harvested when vegetables like cabbage, sukuma wiki, spinach, peas and carrots were all out of season.
Our meals were miserable from that point onwards until we ate up the entire harvest of marenge. My mothers’ marenge recipes went like this: Marenge, meat and potatoes in one pot meal. Marenge, meat, potatoes and githeri in one pot meal. Marenge with skin on, cut up in huge chunks and boiled, that was a meal in itself. We called them mamengo. Githeri mashed in marenge to make a yellow looking mukimo. Marenge stewed into a heavy gravy (mucuthi) served over rice. My mothers ingenuity was endless. We became so weary of marenge we started preferring the potatoes in those meals. Strange but true.
We hated all those marenge meals, but we ate them anyway. There were no food options offered at my house. What was cooked is what everybody ate. If you choose not to eat, then you went to bed hungry, the choice was yours.
